by T. J. Berry
“I don’t think so,” said Ricky. She pointed to a sign mounted above the table.
ALL BETS ARE FINAL AND NONREFUNDABLE
The neofelis hissed and yowled.
“Fine then, go. I’m not into pussies anyway.” The cat limped off after her partner and Ricky settled back into her chair.
“Is this private ante in the form of a liquid or a solid?” Ricky asked.
“Liquid,” said Gary.
Ricky looked dissatisfied and drummed her fingers on the leather tabletop. The wooden girl lit another cigarette and picked splinters out of her teeth.
“Nothing solid at all? A shaving?” Ricky asked. Gary knew better than to admit it.
“Not a lot of bones in the Quag.”
“I hear you ate well before you went in, though,” said Ricky, staring intently at the front of his blue baseball cap. Gary balled his fists, resisting the urge to come back with a hasty reply. Ricky’s words were always calculated. She was trying to goad him toward making a mistake by bringing up Cheryl Ann’s murder. He heard a soft sigh from the table. The blemmye looked distressed. The elfin magic that had been used to craft the disguise was starting to drip down its face in the warm room.
“Fine. Five liters,” said Ricky cryptically. Gary knew what she meant. Even the notorious Ricky Tang didn’t dare say the phrase “unicorn blood” out loud. If the clientele figured out that he wasn’t a faun trying to trade wishes for food, they’d be clawing over each other to tear him to pieces.
“That would kill me. Two liters,” said Gary.
Unicorn blood healed most wounds and was one of the most precious substances in the universe. The last place he wanted to be was in a bar full of desperate people who knew who he really was. There was also a healthy contingent of planetbound xenophobes who had never made peace with the fact that the first aliens humans had encountered were an envoy of talking unicorns who offered to teach them farming. Within a few generations, most of the Bala races had succumbed to the human doctrine of manifest destiny. If there was one regret Gary had in his lengthy life, it was that he’d had to watch so many of his friends die in a pointless fight for galactic supremacy, when cooperation had been offered from the start. Then again, he’d never had just one regret.
“I don’t care if you’re dead. My ship’s not worth less than five liters,” said Ricky.
“Three,” said Gary.
Ricky looked out the window, considering for long enough that the blemmye risked wiping away the slimy wetness collecting on its chin. The wooden girl narrowed her eyes.
“I don’t know why you let a blemmye sit at your table, Ricky,” said the wooden girl. “Everyone knows they suck the luck right out of the room.”
Jenny might not have been an actual blemmye, but the puppet didn’t know how right she was. If Jenny Perata had risked Ricky’s wrath by coming back into the Blossom, things were about to get contentious.
The blemmye lifted a doughy middle finger and grunted. The wooden girl spat a wad of dry sawdust back. It settled on the table.
“Everyone is welcome at my games,” Ricky said to the wooden girl. She turned back to Gary. “Four liters. Take it or leave it.” She flicked her head toward the Reason officers. “This is your only chance to get out of here. The laws have changed. On any Reason-controlled planet you’ll be picked up within minutes. Your very existence is illegal. It’s only professional courtesy that they’ve left you alone in here for this long.”
A pair of COs recognized Gary from the Quag and spat slurred curses in his direction with all of the intensity they could muster after complimentary glasses of larval eggwine. The dark purple secretion seared the throat on the way down and shredded the esophagus on the way back up, but during the twenty minutes in between, the drinker stood in the presence of their god. The COs looked disappointed to be back in reality, but were very much enjoying heckling what they thought was an ex-convict faun. He’d gone by his mother’s surname, Ramanathan, while in the Quag. The name Cobalt was synonymous with unicorns and he hoped neither Ricky nor Jenny would be foolish enough to use it in here.
“You have no other options, Gary. Four liters is a gift. A welcome back present from me to you,” said Ricky, blowing him a kiss. Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners. For a moment, it truly did seem like a fair deal. Then his blood kicked in and removed the toxin that she had just puffed into his face and the deal seemed just as raw as ever. But it wasn’t as if he had many other options.
“Fine,” said Gary.
“I’m so excited,” Ricky stage-whispered to everyone seated around the table.
“What about the blemmye?” whined the wooden girl. The blemmye shrank back in its seat, pulling up its hood to hide its face.
“Your luck problem isn’t the blemmye,” said Ricky, training her laser focus on the wooden girl, who shrank back in her chair. “The problem is the ancient card counter installed in your brain.”
The doll’s eyes went wide.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice the freshly cut access panel behind your ear. Or the gears creaking inside your head. They’re louder than a fairy’s orgasm.”
The wooden girl’s eyes were suddenly sticky with sappy tears.
“I would never cheat. I just need to win enough to bail my fairy godmother out of the Quag.” She batted lashes that looked like toothpicks.
“You are a cheater and a liar and I know all about the money you owe the Sisters. You’re never going to win, but if you want to keep playing, I’m happy to keep taking your money,” said Ricky.
The wooden girl’s eyes went from wide, innocent hollows to narrow slits dripping with anger instead of sap.
“I guess that means I don’t need to pretend you’re a girl any more.” The doll dropped her cigarette onto the table where it smoldered on the sawdust she’d spit at the blemmye. Ricky picked up the stub and blew the ashes off the leather. She took a long drag and the ember glowed hot. She let it out with her eyes closed as if this was her first cigarette in years. The noise in the room died down to a murmur as everyone waited to see what Ricky would do. She’d killed people for less.
“When you come into a person’s place of business and deliberately call them something they are not…” she paused to exhale a perfect ring of smoke and her eyes flicked up and to the left, “…you give the impression that you have no respect for that person.”
The air in the room disappeared as the regulars sucked in their breath. A chair scraped across the floor. Ricky took the doll’s hand into her own, tenderly, like a woman consoling a friend. She stubbed the cigarette into the tiny wooden palm.
The doll screamed and tried to pull away. Ricky’s slender fingers clenched around her like a vise. Gary watched as Jenny pushed her hidden wheelchair away from the table, the blemmye disguise running down her face in little rivulets of moist magic. Straight brown hair showed through the blemmye’s shoulder and the outline of a human face replaced the blemmye’s blank expression. The eyes crinkled at the edges, like someone who laughed often. Gary had looked into those steely eyes many times. They looked tired now, ten years since he’d seen her last.
Anger tightened across his chest like a hand squeezing. All the nights he’d imagined what to say if they ever met again, and now here she was and he found himself at a loss for words. He looked away, pretending not to recognize her, but kept the wheelchair in his peripheral vision. Jenny was a formidable opponent who had bested him in the past. And unlike Ricky, who would use her wits to outsmart him, Jenny would have no qualms about besting him in a physical fight.
The chair under the doll clicked and popped. A strange creature skittered across her lap. At first it looked like a moving blanket snaking its way up her torso, but some of the blanket broke away into lines that led down her arms. Tens of thousands of insects swarming out of the upholstery and marching in unison up the girl.
“What are th… No!” The doll writhed and screamed, bugs skittering into her open mouth. The tendons in Ricky’s for
earm tensed as she held the girl in place on the chair.
“You think you can come into my bar,” said Ricky over the agitated humming of insects, “try to cheat me and lie to me, not to mention speak to me in that manner? You have no heart, you dry-rotted, hardwood bitch.”
The doll choked up clots of insects. A few clumps carried timing gears between them. Bugs wandered out of her eyes and ears, slow from eating their fill of macerated wood. Ricky let go of her hand. The doll tried to wipe away the invaders, but they swarmed too quickly.
“One time, a missionary came into my bar and asked if a creature like me had a soul, or if it had burned away when I turned against God,” said Ricky. “Would you like to know what happened to that man?” She ran her free hand across the leather surface of the gaming table. “You’ve been playing on him.”
The broken fairy lifted his head up off the leather and crinkled his button nose. The wooden girl slumped in her chair, her eyes two empty caverns. An undulating group of insects climbed out of her slack-jawed mouth, holding a small bit of dark wood. They marched across the tabletop and dropped it in front of Ricky. She picked it up and twirled it between her fingers. It was intricately carved into the anatomical shape of a heart.
“This will make a lovely necklace for a lovely lady,” she said, sliding the wooden heart into the pocket of her dress. She swept the rest of the ante into a slot in the table and waved the rest of the players away.
“Game over. We have a private ante that takes precedence,” said Ricky.
No one dared to move.
“Ah, right,” she said, eyeing her ocular display. There were audible clicks from all of the seats at the table. With a flick of her eyes, Ricky’s voice was amplified throughout the bar. Gary was about to find himself in the spotlight – anyone who hadn’t noticed him yet was about to.
“Beings of Bala and humans of Reason,” said Ricky, addressing everyone. “I apologize for the violence done here today. I take full responsibility for the incident. You see, it was my choice to cedar at the game table.”
She flashed a saucy grin and everyone in the room began to breathe again. Ricky took Gary’s hand into hers, squeezing his fingers reassuringly.
“You ready for this?” she whispered, looking up at him and pulling down his cap playfully. She ran a finger down his nose and he pulled away. “I forgot how big you are in person. Another time, another place, you and me could have…” Gary backed away. Ricky’s face froze. “Oh. Are the legends really true? Unicorns are asexual? My apologies.”
Gary stared at her for a long moment. He appreciated her beauty – and the way she carried herself with the surety of someone with a dozen traps hidden on their person – but unicorns did not often experience sexual urges. Most immortals didn’t, or the universe would be overrun with the offspring of eternal beings. Of course, sexuality and love formed a complex spectrum and individual unicorns experienced it differently, which is how Gary was conceived by a unicorn father and a human mother. Though he did not experience sexual attraction, there were many beings in the universe that Gary admired, and even a few that he loved fiercely.
Ricky turned back to the crowd.
“Gentle beings and jewels of every gender, today I bring you a spectacle like none you have ever seen in any corner of the Reason. This man has offered to compete in a game of skill in an attempt to win my new stoneship.” She gestured outside to the Jaggery, which now sported a pink flower the size of a building. “The ante he has put up is private, known only to him and me. It will be revealed at the conclusion of the game. Aren’t you curious what this ex-convict owns that could be worth as much as my pretty new ship? Probably something Bala…” she teased.
The crowd pressed in close. The servers moved through them, ready to take orders.
“If Gary survives all three of my challenges, he will win my ship. If he fails at even one, I receive his private ante. Creatures both Reason and Bala, you’re going to want to see this ante. Buy your drinks now so you don’t miss a moment.”
Hands went up and servers flicked their fingers across tablet screens with practiced speed. Bottles clinked as the bartender moved double time.
“Gary, do you agree to the terms of the game?” asked Ricky, waiting to record his verbal agreement on her ocular display.
“By the lengthy strides of Unamip and the hardy gallop of Fanaposh, the reverberating snort of Finadae, and the piercing whinny of Hulof, I invoke the strength of Arabis and the–”
Ricky slapped her hand over his mouth and rolled her eyes to the crowd.
“Pantheists, am I right?” she asked, who chuckled as they waited for their drinks to arrive.
Gary knew he’d have to negotiate for the Jaggery, but he had naively assumed it would be a private deal, not a public game of skill. Unless he was incredibly careful, he was going to out himself as a unicorn and end up back in the Quag before the game finished. He pried Ricky’s hand off his face and adjusted his cap again.
A server dropped a plate of broiled cow meat at one of the tables. Gary smelled the roasted bone nestled inside the seared flesh. His knees nearly gave way from the wave of hunger that gnawed at him. Ricky grabbed his elbow.
“Steady there, big guy,” she whispered off mic. “No fainting until I get my blood.”
He looked for Jenny. She’d wheeled herself into a back corner where no one would notice as the disguise continued to slide down her face. She was clearly a human and not a blemmye, but everyone was so transfixed by Ricky’s announcement of a game that no one saw as she wiped off the last of the elf excretions with her sleeve. It gave Gary the tiniest bit of pleasure to know that magic like that only came from elf semen, which she’d had to smear all over herself. The indignity of it was a small consolation, but he had comforted himself with those for a long time now.
Ricky reached under the table and pulled out a faded canvas bag printed with an elaborate script. It read, “The Atlantic & Pacific Grocery Company,” an artifact from her sideline trade in Earth antiquities.
“For the first challenge, we use the baby bag,” said Ricky. “Gary, choose your fate.”
Gary reached in and dug into the bottom of the bag. Ricky often rigged the more difficult tasks to jump into players’ hands. He pulled out one from deep in the corner, covered in crumbs.
Ricky took the tile from Gary and read it. She blew a low whistle that reverberated throughout the bar.
“Oh, this one is going to be fun. Who here wants to experience the moment of their death?” A few inebriated hands went up. Mostly Bala for whom magic was as familiar as breathing.
“Well you just got your chance.” She held the tile above her head so everyone in the room could see the bird carved into its surface. A man in the back gasped. A corrections officer shuffled out the front door muttering that there was no way she was going to watch this shit. The rest of the crowd was riveted on Ricky.
“The Sixian parrot!”
Being half-unicorn gave Gary a better chance of survival than most people, but the Sixian parrot was by no means an easy challenge. There were entire institutions filled with humans who thought they could face the bird safely. He braced himself. He hadn’t come all this way to end up trapped in the vision of his own death.
CHAPTER TWO
The Sixian Parrot
The crowd parted for a server wearing three pairs of welding goggles over her six eyes. One long tentacle held a covered cage the size of a human child far out in front of her. She set it on the game table and Ricky flicked her microphone on.
“Our challenger must stare at the Sixian parrot for a full sixty seconds. Does anyone know the secret of the parrot?” she asked.
“It shows you the moment of your death,” said a human girl bursting out of a too-small sundress near the front of the room. She was likely a child in town to visit her parents in prison. There weren’t many humans locked up in the Quagmire, but consorting with a Bala being could get someone a thirty-day stint. If Jenny’s dryad wife was
here, they were both in danger of incarceration. And if Jenny was arrested for being married to a tree spirit, they’d take her wheelchair as a potential weapon. It would be hard to maim her attackers from the floor. Not impossible, but hard.
“The young lady is correct,” said Ricky. “Gary must watch the moment of his death. Now you may be thinking to yourself, ‘But Ricky, how is that a challenge? He sees his own death, he feels a little sad, no big deal.’ But it is a big deal. Can anyone tell me why?”
“Some people go insane,” shouted a man from the back, slurring “people” into “pee-ooh.” He was deep into the drink.
“Is that Lieutenant Cy?” asked Ricky.
“Yeah,” said a ruddy-cheeked human not too far from Jenny.
“Lieutenant Cy is also correct. I see you’re drinking the larval eggwine. What did your god tell you this time, Cy?”
“He said I should have gone to the library today,” said Cy. The room erupted in laughter. Ricky smirked.
“Probably true for all of us,” she mused. “But reading patriotic textbooks and watching old television shows isn’t going to pay the piper, so here we are. In any case, Lieutenant Cy is right. You don’t simply see your death, you experience it. You’ll feel the sword’s blade piercing your heart. You’ll gasp for air as seawater fills your lungs. You’ll smell your own flesh crackling as fire consumes you.” She mimed all of these horrific deaths, her nails clawing at her throat.
“Two-thirds of all creatures who stare into the eyes of the Sixian parrot will lose their minds.” A few people moved toward the exit. Ricky waved them back.
“Don’t worry everyone, our Bitter Blossom servers will pass out glasses to protect you from the effects of the bird. Just ten dollars for the rental.”
Servers distributed eye protection in various configurations matching each of the represented species. Ricky pulled a pair of glasses out of a pocket, encrusted with gems and giving off the distinct glow of magic. Eyewear like that would protect her from more than just a Sixian parrot.